Don’t ‘jump to conclusions,’ experts say

Thursday, April 18, 2013 -- Anonymous (not verified)

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Friday, April 19, 2013

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Matt Stout

The newly released images of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects show that terrorists cannot be easily stereotyped, according to experts who caution the public not to jump to conclusions about their ethnicity or possible motives.

“I was hoping like everyone else as soon as we saw the pictures, we would know what organization or agenda the terrorists were promoting and hopefully we’d catch them immediately,” said Jessica Stern, a Hoover Institution fellow.

“You kind of think, ‘If I see this person, I’ll understand what this is about.’ ... But you really can’t jump to conclusions based on appearances. Al-Qaeda’s best recruit is probably a pregnant woman.”

That concept has played out time after time in terrorist investigations, Stern said, pointing to the infamous case of Colleen Renee LaRose, better known as “Jihad Jane,” the American-born woman who authorities say plotted to recruit Islamic terrorists.

Another example, she said, is Jackie Banny Arklov, a Swedish neo-Nazi whose mother is black.

“The idea that you can tell by looking at someone what organization they might belong to is clearly wrong,” she said.

The array of photos and video show the two suspects walking down Boylston Street, including just feet from each other in one picture time-stamped at 2:37 p.m.

But other than the fact they’re male, there’s little, if anything, that’s distinguishable, experts said. Boston College professor Robert Bloom said they “kind of look like anybody I would see hanging around the BC campus.”

“This act is an act of terrorism. If they’re responsible for the act, I would call them terrorists. Whether or not they were part of a group we’ve identified as terrorists, I don’t know” from these images, Bloom said. “They look kind of regular.”